Oscar-winner recalls late mother’s words on cancer while reflecting on grief, resilience, and the importance of living fully
At the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Angelina Jolie delivered one of the most emotional moments of the event — breaking down in tears while recalling her late mother’s advice about living with cancer.
The world premiere of Couture, directed by Alice Winocour, sees Jolie step into the role of Maxine, a film director who learns she has breast cancer while on a work trip to Paris. The character grapples not only with her diagnosis but also with balancing motherhood, sexuality, and her artistic career. For Jolie, the story was deeply personal.
During the post-screening Q&A, an audience member who had recently lost a friend to cancer asked Jolie for her perspective. Struggling to hold back tears, the actress shared a memory of her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, who passed away in 2007 after an eight-year battle with breast and ovarian cancer.
“I think I will say that one thing I remember my mother saying when she had cancer,” Jolie recalled. “She said to me once, we had had a dinner and people were asking her how she was feeling and what she was doing, and she said, ‘All anybody ever asks me about is cancer.’”
Jolie continued with heartfelt advice: “So I would say, if you know someone who’s going through something, ask them about everything else in their life as well. They’re a whole person, and they’re still living.”
The audience responded with resounding applause, touched by her vulnerability and wisdom.
A Role That Mirrors Reality
The actress has faced her own health struggles. In 2013, Jolie revealed in The New York Times that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
“My chances of developing breast cancer dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent,” she wrote at the time. “I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
That decision, along with her mother’s battle, lent extra poignancy to Jolie’s performance in Couture.
“What I really love is that there’s often films that deal with cancer that become about the cancer, and the life becomes defined by the illness,” she said at TIFF. “Instead, Couture is about the whole life — Maxine isn’t just this. She’s a mother, she’s an artist, she’s sexual. I thought it was important to show that and to live forward while we’re here. Try to live as much as we can.”
Honoring Life Through Storytelling
Jolie described the experience of making the film as a chance to reflect on life itself. “Every single person here has been touched by grief, every single person here has lost someone,” she said. “What I really felt fortunate about was being part of a story that makes you sit and think about life, in all its fullness.”
Couture, which also stars Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf, Anyier Anei, and Vincent Lindon, is largely performed in French, further showcasing Jolie’s versatility as an actress.
For Jolie, the premiere was more than just a professional milestone — it was a personal reminder of resilience, love, and carrying forward her mother’s legacy of strength and dignity.
